Garden Tips Digging Groundhog Day

February 05, 1984|by S. GLENN ELLENBERGER, Sunday Call-Chronicle

The mysterious power of Groundhog Day lingers on. The groundhog's weather prediction so strongly influences the lives of the home folk here in the Lehigh Valley, that many plan their activities around it.

You must wonder how this prominent animal has reacted to our winter weather. With the record-breaking cold we've experienced, do you suppose he has hunted for a warmer climate, deeper in the earth? How does he know what the weather has in store? I doubt that he reads the forecast in The Morning Call or tunes into a weather station radio for a quick report.

Somehow, this creature, so honored by his homo sapiens followers, has adjusted better to the fast pace of the last quarter of the 20th century than we have. He doesn't need a new heating system, a modern quilted down comforter or special vitamins for the winter to survive. In fact, the groundhog population seems to increase, year after year.

Can we learn from this creature we hold in such high esteem? You bet! To survive, we humans, too, should make plans to dig into Mother Earth - in our gardens, that is!

CARROT CELEBRATION

Doesn't it seem to you that every time you turn around, someone is declaring a new holiday, a new year or a new something or other? Well, sorry about this, but I'm about to inform you of another. This is the Year of the Carrot. (Maybe that's why mine are still in the garden, unharvested and frozen!)

The carrot is a great vegetable, full of nutritious goodies, versatile in use and known to be around for at least 2,000 years. The first ones were not orange as we know them. Would you believe they were purple? The orange variety dates back to the 17th century in Holland.

The carrot, in the wild, is known as Queen Anne's Lace. It has a blossom very similar to that of the cultivated carrot. However, the root of the wild variety is stringy, strong and unusable.

The are four types of cultivated carrots, based on the shape of the root - taper, stump, cylindrical and ball. We usually grow the first three types, and the varieties best known of each are Danvers, Chantenay and Nantes, respectively.

Carrots like to grow in deep, loose soil. Hard soil or obstructions cause the roots to become misshapen. Seeds scattered in a narrow row or in a 6-by-12 inch band will do well, but seedlings must be thinned to an inch apart.

To help the slower germinating seeds of the carrot pop through the soil to find sunlight, plant them with radish or lettuce seeds, which come up quickly and keep the soil crust open. A layer of sand, peat or other loose material also works well. Cover the seed with only about one-half inch of the material when planting.

Seeds that are planted early will benefit greatly from a clear plastic cover. Carrots can be planted as late as August if you'd like a late crop. Deep watering, mulching and plenty of fertility will ensure a good harvest. And, fortunately, there are usually no insects or diseases that bother them.

NORFOLK ISLAND PINE

What do you do when your indoor pine reaches the ceiling? Someone asked me that question recently. I must admit, my first thought was to tell them to cut a hole in the ceiling or floor or to just give up and donate it to a building that has high ceilings.

But, on a more serious note, it is a problem. You don't really want to cut off the top, though you can, according to the books. The top spike can be rooted in a starter mix in a plastic bag. You can also try air-layering on the trunk. With this process, roots develop at a section of the trunk that has been partially sliced and, then, surrounded with a ball of damp moss, wrapped in plastic. However, it may be months before the roots are long enough for you to cut off and plant the shortened pine.

If the pine were mine, I guess I'd try to give it a new home and buy a new, smaller one and watch it grow.

The Norfolk Island Pine, or araucaria excelsa, that we grow is not exactly the same as the species we see growing outdoors in Florida, California or Hawaii. Those are usually the araucaria araucana, or the monkey puzzle tree.

Often, this type of plant is started from seed, but nurseries that reproduce them usually cut back a tree, forcing it to develop numerous terminal shoots for rerooting.

Norfolk Island Pine is a native to the island for which it is named, the Norfolk Island, located in the South Pacific.

FLOWER SHOW CHALLENGE

Though I really enjoy flower shows, I sometimes feel a bit envious to see the perfect blooms, color, foliage and settings. Why can't I have the same in my garden and patches? Why are the plants I try to grow "just for pretty" plagued with mildew, leaf spot, aphids, mites, beetles, scab or numerous other problems?

Well, the biggest difference between flower shows and Glenn's garden lies in the thousands of variations in environment between the outdoors and the perfectly controlled greenhouses.